Google co-founders Larry Page, bottom, and Sergey Brin are seen at company headquarters Thursday, Jan. 15, 2004, in Mountain View, Calif. Google Inc.'s initial public offering already has a lot of people salivating for a piece of the action, an appetite that the Internet search engine leader hopes to satisfy by inviting the masses to the bidding table. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Photo: BEN MARGOT

Google co-founders Larry Page, bottom, and Sergey Brin are seen at...

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Google Going Strong. Chronicle Graphic

Photo: Chronicle Graphic

Google Going Strong. Chronicle Graphic

Premium price for IPO / Google sets offering range for shares as it reports second-quarter profit more than twice last year's

Google has unveiled details of its much anticipated stock offering, saying it plans to sell 24.6 million shares to the public for up to $135 each. That would give the wildly popular search engine a market value of $36 billion, on par with household names like Sony Corp. and Walgreen Co.

The new details, revealed in a regulatory filing Monday, are the latest step in what is one of Wall Street's most anticipated initial public offerings in years. Investors have been waiting impatiently for the information to help them determine whether the company's shares are worth buying. Despite the new information, it's still unclear when the firm will start trading on the Nasdaq exchange with the ticker symbol GOOG.

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In the filing, Google said that it expects its shares to trade between $108 and $135. That would value the company between $29 billion and $36 billion, a level just shy of Yahoo's, one of Google's chief rivals and a much bigger company.

Randall, who is considering buying Google shares, cautioned that there are many risks involved for Google investors. He pointed to the lack of seasoning among some of Google's top executives and to potential downturns in the company's red-hot online advertising business. As if to punctuate that vulnerability, an Internet virus disabled the site Monday morning.

It should also be noted that Google's estimated share value is not written in stone. The company is selling its stock through an auction that could ultimately push the final share price higher or lower than expected, depending on investor appetite.

No date has been set for when the bidding will begin. Under the fairly unproven auction method, prospective investors bid for Google shares through their investment bankers.

The stock sale could raise up to $3.32 billion, according to Google. That would rank Google among the 10 biggest initial public offerings. AT&T Wireless leads the list at $10.6 billion, raised in 2000 during the technology boom.

Google's proceeds from going public will likely be around $1.66 billion. Insiders who are also selling stock in the offering will get the rest.

Mountain View's Google was founded in 1998 by two Stanford University doctoral candidates, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. From the start, they blazed an unconventional path -- from their passion for roller hockey to the more recent pledges to forgo the Wall Street tradition of giving financial forecasts.

Both men plan to sell just under 1 million shares each, valued at more than $100 million. They each own $5.2 billion worth of shares based on the high end of the estimated share price. Yahoo and Time Warner also plan to sell some of their Google stock in the IPO.

Also on Monday, Google reported its second-quarter financial results. They paint a picture of a company sprinting ahead despite the recent distraction of the stock offering.

In the second quarter, Google turned a profit of $79.1 million (30 cents per share), compared with $32.2 million (12 cents) in the same period last year. Revenue more than doubled to $700 million from $311 million in 2003.

Even with such stellar results, analysts said Google's estimated share price is expensive. Using Wall Street yardsticks such as the price-to-earnings ratio, Google is valued far above the typical company, but on par with Internet giants Yahoo and EBay.

"It's definitely not cheap," said Sasa Zorovic, an analyst for Oppenheimer & Co.

Adding to the risk are small investors who could bid Google's shares too high, Zorovic said. Big investors are concerned that share prices could therefore drop precipitously after they begin trading.

"It would be horrific," Zorovic said.

Google has acknowledged the risk. However, it has said it would intervene to stop it by discounting any wildly speculative bids during the firm's initial auction process.

Included in Google's filing Monday was the disclosure that David Drummond, the company's general counsel and vice president of corporate development, is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Google said the commission's staff intends to recommend a civil injunction against Drummond for alleged violations of federal securities law, including anti-fraud provisions.

The action would be related to Drummond's previous role as chief financial officer for SmartForce, an educational software company, Google said. Federal regulators are looking at whether Drummond violated disclosure and accounting rules in SmartForce's financial statements.

On Monday, Google began a limited road show to market its shares to big potential investors, according to Wall Street investment bankers. The road show was to begin Monday night in New York and ultimately travel to San Francisco in a closed-door meeting in early August.

To sell its shares, Google has enlisted an array of investment banks in an effort to reach out to small investors. But a handful of those banks has since changed their minds and pulled out.

Last month, Merrill Lynch's name disappeared from the list, reportedly because of the extra hassles of the auction compounded by Google's insistence of paying unusually small fees. In Monday's filing, the names of two more banks were gone, RBC Capital Markets and SunTrust Robinson Humphrey.